Southern California -- this just in

Did protesters who disrupted Israeli ambassador's speech deserve to be criminally charged?

February 5, 2011 | 9:04
am

Orange County Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas pulled no punches Friday when he charged 11 students with conspiring to disrupt a speech by the Israeli ambassador to the United States at UC Irvine last year.

"We must decide whether we are a country of laws or a country of anarchy," Rackauckas said. "We cannot tolerate a preplanned violation of the law, even if the crime takes place on a school campus and even if the defendants are college students. In our democratic society, we cannot tolerate a deliberate, organized, repetitive and collective effort to significantly disrupt a speaker who hundreds assembled to hear."

Photo: Students protest in support of their UC Irvine classmates who were disciplined by the university after disrupting a speech by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren. Credit: Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times